


A Lightning Before Death

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort, Devotion, Hellfire, Holy Water, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Canon, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 09:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19196353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: Their ruse was never going to hold forever. Aziraphale wanted to ask Crowley a question, but they're running out of time.





	A Lightning Before Death

Crowley wasn’t surprised as often as he would like. He supposed it to be a side-effect of his general paranoia. When he assumed the worst, he was usually correct, if not always in all of the specifics.

He had been surprised twice, so many years ago in Eden: once with how much cataclysm his little bit of trouble-making had caused; and once when Aziraphale stretched out a wing to shelter him from the very first storm.

Since then, he had been gradually less surprised by the capacity for destruction on both sides of the war, but his friend’s instinctive kindness had still regularly caught him unawares. Adam had surprised him. _Humans_ surprised him, with their ingenuity, their stubbornness, the way they danced across lines they drew themselves, committing acts of cruelty Hell could not imagine and acts of compassion Heaven would never comprehend.

Demons seldom surprise him.

Ten years after the apocalypse that wasn’t, Crowley was proven entirely right about one firmly held suspicion: Hell, at any rate, had only been biding its time.

It was another hundred or so years after that – though it was hard to keep track in the pits – before he had solid proof of another: Hell had no practical issue with a bit of information sharing with the auld enemy, it was specifically Crowley and Aziraphale’s form of fraternising they objected to.

And it was one hundred and sixty years after that, to Crowley’s best guess, that he confirmed something else. A demon could not die of boredom. The true torture of hell was eternity. He bleeds, and burns, and freezes, and screams, and there would always be more time. The cell was cold and dripping - they seemed to have noticed that Crowley hated that most, the way he could never get warm here, a pervasive damp chill like an English February. The only interruptions to that would be more specific forms of pain, and even that would only repeat, over and over again. Ecclesiastes had it wrong – it was only under the sun where you found anything new at all.

 

*

Now:

The space is bright and airy, clean, pierced through by a facsimile of sunlight. In its own way it is no less full of horror than the pit Crowley finds himself residing in. A panel of angels stare at Aziraphale. Gabriel stands in the centre of them, to the front, his mouth twisted in faint disgust.

Aziraphale wonders if there’s a patina of Hell corroded over him, if there was a chance before his wings started burning, before they dragged him back upstairs again.

He chooses his words carefully. He has always been a terrible actor but then these angels have never put the effort into learning how to read a human face. He says, “There’s only one damned thing that would cause me any harm at all and he's- it’s not within your power. So.”

He sees Gabriel slowly mouth first ‘damned’ and then ‘ _he_ ’. Gabriel puts his hand solidly on Aziraphale’s damaged shoulder and squeezes. “My powers are greater than you fucking know.” He turns on his heel and heads out of the door.

Aziraphale suspects that the expression that creeps onto his face, when he is finally alone, would be described as smug. It only lasts for a second. Even if this plan works, he will wish that it hadn’t. But they will be wishing that too. 

 

*

It has been a very long time since Crowley had need of words. Down there they are mostly only interested in screaming and even he lost enthusiasm for witticism after the first century of imprisonment. He has to make an effort to line up the words in a mouth inexplicably dry. “Angel, you look like, well: hell.”

Aziraphale has been hurt. Crowley sees it and something in him still instinctively reaches for his powers, for a channel to the well of infinite rage he finds in him on looking at Aziraphale with tattered wings and bloodied clothing. Aziraphale jolts and lifts his head. Crowley was lying before – of course he was lying – Aziraphale could never look like hell. He looks like what heaven might have been. He looks like the blue skies over Tadfield on the first day after the end of the world. 

Aziraphale exhales slowly, and says his name. “Crowley.”

“I suppose I should say thank you.”

“You shouldn’t.” Aziraphale is wearing clothing that Crowley doesn’t recognise, a style he doesn’t know which he still suspects is at least twenty years out of date. Aziraphale winces when he stretches up into the little slack afforded him, tied down as he is with angelic bindings.

Michael takes custody of Crowley from Lord Beelzebub, directing him to be strapped down in another chair. Michael spins it around the other way from the chair Aziraphale is tied to, apparently just to be a wanker. Crowley finds himself staring at a white wall. 

When the other two leave, looking awfully chummy for an Archangel and a Lord of Hell theoretically just here to manage a prisoner transfer, Crowley attempts to move the chair. It refuses to budge. That is the kind of luck he’s been having for the last two or three centuries.

Crowley sighs. “I suppose you did have something to do with this? Can’t imagine Hell decided the time was right for me to have a little fieldtrip to the motherland. Unless,” he pauses. “I haven’t finally just snapped and imagined you, have I?”

“Crowley.”

“I _did_ talk to you for a bit, just for something to do, hope you couldn’t actually hear me, but I stopped that a while back, hundred years or so, apart from when I slipped-”

“Crowley!”

“Aziraphale.” Crowley doesn’t think even his considerable powers of imagination could conjure up so perfect a recollection of Aziraphale’s exasperation. And if he was creating this himself – a vision of Aziraphale – Crowley suspects he would conjure up something more substantial than two chairs, not quite back-to-back, and the rising panicked sound of the angel’s breathing. Crowley flicks the air with his tongue, still recognising the scent of Aziraphale underneath the artificially piped-in perfumes of Heaven. If nothing else goes right today – or ever again – at least he knows that the two of them were here together for a moment he thought he wouldn’t see again.

“I’ve done something,” Aziraphale says, “and now that you’re here I don’t know if it was the right thing.”

Crowley smiles. “You’re an angel. I’m not sure you can do the wrong thing.”

That might be a laugh from behind him and Crowley feels absurdly proud of himself. “We’ve both come a long way since Eden,” Aziraphale says.

“Can’t deny that.” There is a long silence. Crowley breaks it. “Tell me.”

“Back in 1968,” Aziraphale says. “Your little caper. If I had given you a second flask of- you know. If there had been two.”

Crowley thinks about it for a second. “Would have destroyed Hastur as well as Ligur.”

“No, that’s not what I- before they caught you this time. If you’d still had the flask in that safe of yours?”

“Wasn't really time to make plans,” Crowley admits. He had been sure something was coming, but they hadn't given warning before appearing in his flat this time. And without Armageddon to distract them, Crowley isn’t sure there would have been anywhere he could have run away to where they wouldn’t have found him.

Aziraphale is shaking his head frantically from the sound of it, shaking all over in fact. His wings and clothing rustle like leaves in a powerful storm. Crowley can't remember him being like this. Or possibly once. 

“Why am I here, angel?” Crowley asks.

“I couldn't ask you,” Aziraphale says. “And I didn’t know what you wanted, if that was _still_ what you wanted. But I knew what they’d be doing to you. And I thought- they were planning to torture me. Or not torture me, they wouldn’t call it that. Execute justice upon me. And they realised, after a bit of a push, that there was one excellent way to do it. So you see, my dear, I suspect they brought you here so they could destroy you in front of me. They might plan to harm you first but the end of it will be-”

“Holy water.”

“Yes.” Aziraphale’s voice is soft. “I left it a while, in case you had a plan. And I tried to think of a better one. I tried to get down there myself. That’s when-”

Crowley hears more rustling - Aziraphale gesturing with his damaged wings.

Aziraphale says, “And then, after that, I spent an unconscionable amount of time trying to drop hints to Archangels. But of course, I couldn't ask you if that was still what you- I’ve almost certainly signed your death warrant, and I am so very sorry.”

Crowley stops him. “Aziraphale. You've known me for what? Six thousand, three hundred years, give or take? You knew exactly what I would want.”

“Crowley.”

“It’s okay, angel. Better than that even.”

“I wish I could have given you Alpha Centauri instead.”

“I would-” Crowley pauses, because he would really only have said this drunk or desperate, and he hasn’t been drunk for nearly three centuries. “I missed you. If I’d had the stuff in my flat, I would have been sorry- not to say goodbye to you first.” He rolls his eyes. “Could have done without the time languishing in the deepest pit with Hastur for company, but what’s a few centuries of absence between friends? And I get to see you now. Or hear you, anyway. Fucking Michael.”

“Should have brought a picnic.” The sound Aziraphale makes at his own weak joke is briefly a laugh and then something more like sobbing. Crowley rocks back on the chair, frantic, before Aziraphale murmurs, “Sorry, dearest, sorry, it’s going to be quite all right.” And then Aziraphale moves again, and Crowley feels the edges of angel wings brush his arms, Aziraphale twisting them to try and wrap them around Crowley from behind. 

Crowley exhales, and folds his own wings under Aziraphale’s. They breathe in and out.

“Tell me,” Crowley says, “tell me something new on Earth. Not a book,” he interjects quickly. “Something ridiculous and human and doomed to failure.”

Aziraphale hums. “Do you remember mood rings?”

“Turned their fingers green,” Crowley agrees.

“Well these are a little bit like that, only for their whole heads, all of the skin, quite brightly coloured. And the _patterns_.”

“ _Why?_ ” Crowley demands.

“I have no idea,” Aziraphale says. “But I thought you might enjoy it.”

At this point, it doesn’t matter if Crowley says it. “Thank you.”

 

*

Neither of them are sure how long they are left there to wait. Both too long, and not long enough. But eventually they are marched out into the long heavenly viewing gallery, to jeers from Hastur and his cohort and righteous disapproval from Gabriel and his own.

“At least I get to admire this view,” Crowley says. “Been a while.” The skies seem to stretch forever and probably do.

Gabriel and Beelzebub are both talking. Aziraphale focuses on the byplay on the sidelines. Hastur is preparing hellfire, whether as a precaution or just to attempt to frighten Aziraphale. But Michael is holding a tall glass pitcher of something which must be holy water.

Aziraphale cuts across the noise. “I don’t suppose you’ve thought of any better ideas, my dear?”

Crowley tips his head to one side. His eyes flash golden and lovely in the light. “All out, angel. Sorry to disappoint. Still... we had fun, didn’t we?”

“We most certainly did.” Aziraphale reaches across the space between them, catching everyone by surprise and he wants time, just like the humans who beg to both sides that they will do anything, anything at all, if they can just have a little more _time_. Aziraphale doesn’t pray. He begs forgiveness from the slight demonic form he’s clutching so tightly, watches Crowley’s tiny quirk of a smile, and then he shoves.

Crowley collides into Michael and the holy water spills.

Crowley screams, and Aziraphale is glad he won’t have to live with that sound scorched into his memory for much longer.

The pain must be almost unbearable, but it only lasts a moment.

And then Crowley is gone.

Gabriel starts to laugh. “Is that- was that your _plan_ , Aziraphale? What, you thought we’d just believe you’d had a change of heart, saw the error of your ways if you eliminated one demon?”

Michael’s head is shaking. “That wasn’t his plan.”

Aziraphale stumbles forward; they still haven’t thought to grab hold of him. There are too many of them for him to mount an escape, but that was never the plan either.

Aziraphale had hoped to _fall_ , to descend through the pool of holy water into nothingness with Crowley. He hasn’t had that type of luck in a while. 

He drops to the floor instead, knees of his trousers dampening in the remaining holy water but nothing else happening. “Poison, I see, hath been my true love’s end,” Aziraphale misquotes nonsensically. “O churl! Drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after?”

Gabriel is staring at him, as if worried this might be something catching. He doesn’t move to drag Aziraphale from the floor and back to a cell. 

Aziraphale says, “He always preferred the funny ones, you see.”

Crowley hasn’t left him a dagger. But he has left him a demon wielding hellfire, and the remainder of a gallon of holy water. Aziraphale coughs, looks in Hastur’s direction, and makes to flick his hand.

Hastur had a twitchy trigger finger six thousand three hundred years ago, and has not mellowed with age. He has had waking nightmares about holy water since Crowley extinguished Ligur. And the moment Aziraphale moves his hand, he screams and flings out hellfire.

It is almost unbearable, but it only lasts a moment. Aziraphale had a worse moment than this so very recently. At the edge of hearing, underneath his own screaming, he picks up a sound. And then everything that is becomes a nothingness, like stars winking out.

Gabriel makes a disgusted groan before looking down. From the pool of water he picks up two feathers: one black-quilled with the plume bleached to white; the other white, singed to soot at its edges.

Something, somewhere, causes a shiver to run down the backs of occult and ethereal forces, all of those above, below, and those agents currently on the Earth. It is as if the dealer - who had been smiling her enigmatic, unsettling smile for millennia - had all of a sudden looked around the players remaining at the table, looked at the cards, and you discovered that there were worse things than a smile.

Across the universe there is a sound. It is a gentle, disappointed, and above all ineffable sigh. 

And then she flips the table.

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Title and somewhat accurate quotes from Romeo and Juliet


End file.
